"I
see the Africanization of Black Studies as requiring the restructuring
of Black Studies, — a total restructuring if need be — so that it rests
on the traditional Thought-Patterns of Traditional Africa, which
thereby
become its reason for being, its life essence, the actualization of
these
Thought-Patterns in the day to day lives of common folks being its
specific
objective, to achieve
which
nothing will be allowed to
be an insurmountable obstacle."

—
Chief Fela Sowande (1906 - 1987)

Fela
Sowande was born in Abeokuta
in 1906. He was the world renowned Nigerian concert organist, composer
and conductor, who had the honor of being admitted as a Member of the
British
Empire (M.B.E.) by Queen Elizabeth II in 1956 for his "distinguished
services
in the Cause of Music." The MBE is one of the highest honors to
be bestowed on a civilian. The Federal Government of Nigeria awarded
him
with
the Member of the Federation of Nigeria (N.F.N.) in 1964. Fela Sowande
was commissioned by the Nigerian Federal Ministry of Information, upon
Nigeria's liberation from British rule, to compose the nation's
"National
Anthem" in 1962. In 1968 the State of Lagos awarded Chief Sowande the
"Bagbile
of Lagos" (the Traditional Chieftaincy Award) in recognition of his
research
into Yoruba folklore. Later the University of Ife conferred on him the
Doctorate Honoris Causa in Music in 1972.

We take pride in the fact
that our work
has been guided for twenty-five years or more by the philosophy and
educational
opinions of Chief Fela Sowande, the late Professor of
Ethnomusicology
and Black Studies at Howard University (1968 to 1972), the University
of Pittsburgh (1972 to 1976), and
Visiting Distinguished Professor of Pan-African Studies at Kent State
University (1976 to 1982).
Chief Sowande has willed to those who are committed to creating African
education programs four graphic models essential to the conduct and
administration
of Africa-based educational programs: 1. Two
Program Harmony Models and 2. The
Africentric Paradigm of Curricular Holism. HieroGraphics Online
will
introduce the browsing public to a number of Sowande's works which he,
while he was alive, was reluctant to put before the uninitiated public.

Black
Experience of Religion

Continuities
and
Discontinuities in the Religious ExperienceofPeoples of
African
Descent

By
Chief Fela
Sowande, Howard University, March 1970*

SEGMENT
ONE

Introductory
Note

irtually
no
aspect of the Way of Lifeof Peoples of African Descent
domiciled
in or outside Africa can be profitably discussed, or even cursorily
examined,
without attempting first to clear the air of the smelly smog of long
established
misconceptions, which have led in some instances to the weirdest
emotional
attitudes imaginable, and have consistently prejudiced intelligent and
dispassionate communication on these matters. These misconceptions have
also, in my view, contributed effectively if indirectly to the curious
idea now currently held in so many quarters, that Africa proper is
covered
by what is termed these days: Sub-Saharan Africa; an idea as tenable
and
as logical as would be the idea that America proper is
sub-Mason-Dixon-line,
using the Civil War and subsequent political events in evidence. What
is
more, however, it seems to me sometimes less and less remote that in
the
by no means distant future, sub-Saharan Africa may be replaced by
Equatorial
Africa as representing Africa proper.

In
the meantime, as the
study conducted
by Project Africa in the Fall of 1967 documents, to American Secondary
School students, sub-Saharan Africa is "a hot, primitive land, where
wild
beasts prowl the steaming jungles stalking and being stalked by black
savages
armed only with spears and poison darts," that is, when the "natives,
who
live in villages (and) are not sitting "in front of their huts beating
on drums."

At the
level of American grown-ups, I
think we would
discover that a similar study would reveal that an abnormally high
percentage
of adults possess a philosophy quite close to that of the Illinois
minister
who was preaching about the Brotherhood of Man one Sunday in 1943, and
declared that the "Our" in the Lord's Prayer: Our Father which art in
Heaven,
refers to that family of God which included the citizens of the
United States, the peoples of Great Britain, the heathen
of China, the cannibals of India, the headhunters of
New
Guinea, and the savages of Africa.

It is
clear that there is not much
sense in talking
about the religious experience of the peoples of African descent, while
whatever one says is likely to be related to a jungle Africa
sub-Sahara,
occupied by illiterate, poor, dirty, half-naked, diseased, savage,
black
Africans. But this virus of informed ignorance is no longer a local
disease
but an epidemic, which has become so wide-spread that it has affected
blacks
as well as whites. We all know those blacks domiciled in Africa who
think
that they are the salt of the earth, far superior to their black
African
brothers and sisters on the same continent, and much more so to blacks
outside Africa. Then there are those blacks domiciled outside Africa,
and
they thank God that they are not like other blacks, that they do not
carry
an African passport, and that if they are not yet in the mainstream of
the civilized world of the whiteman they soon will be.

But this
type of blackman, whether or
not he is domiciled
in Africa, is the true Niginji. What is a Niginji"? I first heard the
term
used by my black American professional colleagues in London around
1936;
completely mystified as to what on earth the term could mean, I asked
them;
my ignorance amused them greatly, and between bursts of uncontrollable
belly-laughs they explained that a Niginji was their term for . . .
quote
— an educated nigger! — unquote. They added, for my edification: you
can
take the hick out of the country, but you can't take the country out of
the hick. An educated Niginji is more of a liability to the race than
an
un-educated one, which — I thought to myself at the time — was just as
valid an observation for Africa as apparently it was for America, and
possibly
for other countries where you have sizable groups of blacks.

It is
therefore essential to attempt
at least to
show that the popular fallacies which pass for facts about the Blackman
have no foundations whatever in truth, not so much on account of our
white
as of our black brothers and sisters; obviously we must consider those
young ones who are in danger of being turned into Niginjis by a
so-called
educational system that could not be further removed from real
education;
and we must consider the not-so-young, who have so far managed to
escape
having their black souls raped by the propagandist anthropological
sciences
of our times, and who are still seeking meaningful answers to the many
important basic and relevant questions that have been occupying their
minds,
seemingly for generations.

Unfortunately,
clearing the air of
misconceptions
cannot be done in one or two short paragraphs. But it is imperative
that
at least it should be attempted, even though it means encroaching on
the
space that would otherwise have been devoted to the main theme, and
raises
the additional problem of keeping this Paper within reasonable length.

These are
some of the thoughts that
have determined
to an appreciable extent, not so much the content as the form
and the length of this Paper. I can but hope that the results will
stimulate
deep and sustained thought, among my white as well as by black brothers
and sisters.

What we
humans call "a second" is but
a unit of Time
which drops briefly into the lap of the measurable contemporary Now,
from
the inexhaustible store of the limitless immeasurable Future; it stops
briefly in the Now as it makes its way towards its final destination in
that unfathomable Eternity of Yesterdays, where it becomes one of the
priceless
jewels of experience in the inexhaustible treasure house of the
Creative
Forces of Evolution.

The times
we live in today are such
that, to my mind,
for reasons far too involved to permit outlining here, every such "unit
of Time" underscores the fact that it is suicidal to permit ourselves
not
to see beyond the color of the skin which happens to cover that
physical
house we occupy temporarily, and which we shed when we pass on, as one
day we must. According to Mutwa, the Zulu traditional priest author,
Bantu
philosophy believes that every soul gains experience over one thousand
years, of which only seventy short years are spent in human form.
Seventy
out of one thousand still leaves quite a tidy number.

Therefore,
Black Experience of
Religion must be examined
in terms of Human Experience of Religion, and not as something existing
outside human experience, that of the Human Race within which, whether
we like it or not, the Black Race is totally contained. . . .

Note Well: HieroGraphics
Online will periodically post on this Web site additional installments
of "Chief Fela Sowande's Philosophy and Opinions." Currently we
have posted Sowande's . . .